Research on the risks of under- or unemployment faced by highly qualified non-EU immigrants to Switzerland has focused on the absence of recognition of their foreign qualifications as a major source of vulnerability in the host country. The aim of this paper is to study the employment trajectories of a specific group of migrants who have graduated from a Swiss higher education (HE) institution. Drawing on a life-course perspective, the paper is based on sixteen biographical interviews with a diverse group of highly skilled Peruvian men and women living in Switzerland, after having graduated from a Swiss HE institution. We identify three ideal-type trajectories of migrant graduates with a Swiss HE qualification, based on their field of study, their route of access to formal residential status (essential employment clause / bi-national marriage) and the domestic division of labor and care responsibilities within their households. We show that obtaining a Swiss HE qualification is rarely enough to guarantee non-European graduates access to a stable job that is commensurate to their qualifications. The ability of these Swiss-trained migrants to translate their educational credentials into favorable professional outcomes is highly dependent on family formation patterns and gender arrangements. Some routes to formal residential rights in Switzerland after graduation would seem to cancel out the advantages associated with having a Swiss qualification and lead to long-term precarious employment experiences, especially for female graduates from the humanities and social sciences who receive residential qualifications through marriage to a Swiss or EU national, rather than on the basis of their own contribution to the Swiss labor market.

Over the life course, individuals develop personal networks which provide essential resources - sporadically or on a daily basis - such as instrumental, emotional, and informational support. Those personal networks are composed of family (primary and extended kin) and non-family ties (friends, colleagues, acquaintances) (Pahl & Spencer, 2004). The prominence of specific ties varies across the life course depending on life stages, transitions and events. Following the linked lives principles (Elder, Kirkpatrick Johnson, & Crosnoe, 2003), these transitions trigger changes in household composition, promoting different types of relational interdependency. The level of interdependency with some household members may have a cumulative effect by strengthening these bonds, whereas with others the effect may be more ephemeral and lead to the exclusion of these ties in current personal networks. Thus co-residence trajectories, such as the experience of growing up in a two or one-parent family, leaving the parental home early or late, moving in with a partner or living alone, becoming a parent, divorcing, etc., will differentially influence the composition of personal networks.

Small world theories and modern communication facilities convey the impression of a connected world where geographical boundaries have lost their importance and where everyone can reach everyone else in just a few steps, overcoming large geographical distances apparently with ease. Most studies on network processes, like, for instance, the accumulation of (dis)advantage in network clusters, focus on topological factors only, ignoring geography, while work on network geography often does not attempt to explain the large variance in link distance. This article analyses the geography of everyday links of a young cohort in Switzerland, integrating several levels of analysis: individual characteristics (micro-level), extended ego networks (intermediate level), and functional regions (aggregate or macro level). Our results show that everyday links are very close, and, for our young sample, get larger with age. Residential mobility shows an effect limited in time. However, distance of links is not only a personal, but also a network characteristic; some individual characteristics only have an effect when cumulated at the network level. An analysis of cross-regional links showed that social links among young people in Switzerland are heavily segregated by language and structured along canton borders, but also determined by the type of region of residence. Thus, while it is crucial to take geography into account when analyzing real-world social networks, link distance alone is not sufficient to render the complexity of social ties.

This book critically assesses the main features of the modernization of family life and personal relationships by examining and comparing three European countries with different social and political pathways: Portugal, Switzerland and Lithuania. Drawing on national surveys of family trajectories and social networks, the contributors highlight personal and family relationships through the lens of network and life course perspectives as well as gender and generational perspectives. Providing innovative, comparative findings on families and personal networks through the use of diverse methodologies, this edited collection will be of interest to scholars, students and policymakers across a range of social science disciplines.

We propose a method to decompose the young adult mortality hump by cause of death. This method is based on a flexible shape-decomposition of mortality rates that separates cause-of-death contributions to the hump from senescent mortality. We apply the method to US males and females from 1959 to 2010. Results show divergences between time trends of hump and observed deaths, both for all-cause and cause-specific mortality. The study of the hump shape reveals age, period and cohort effects, suggesting that it is formed by a complex combination of different forces of biological and socioeconomic nature. Male and female humps share some traits in all-cause shape and trend, but also differ by their overall magnitude and cause-specific contributions. Notably, among males the contributions of traffic and other accidents were progressively replaced by those of suicides, homicides and poisonings, whereas among females traffic accidents remained the major contributor to the hump.

The present paper aims to introduce multilevel logistic regression analysis in a simple and practical way. First, we introduce the basic principles of logistic regression analysis (conditional probability, logit transformation, odds ratio). Second, we discuss the two fundamental implications of running this kind of analysis with a nested data structure: In multilevel logistic regression, the odds that the outcome variable equals one (rather than zero) may vary from one cluster to another (i.e., the intercept may vary) and the effect of a lower-level variable may also vary from one cluster to another (i.e., the slope may vary). Third and finally, we provide a simplified three-step “turnkey” procedure for multilevel logistic regression modeling: PRELIMINARY PHASE: Cluster- or grand-mean centering variables; STEP #1: Running an empty model and calculating the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC); STEP #2 Running a constrained and an augmented intermediate model and performing a likelihood ratio test to determine whether considering the cluster-based variation of the effect of the lower-level variable improves the model fit; STEP #3 Running a final model and interpreting the odds ratio and confidence intervals to determine whether data support your hypothesis. Command syntax for Stata, R, Mplus, and SPSS are included. These steps will be applied to a study on Justin Bieber, because everybody like Justin Bieber.

How are gender, « race » and class constantly involving and producing a social hierarchy of bodies, that contributes to differentiate individuals and social groups through their body attributes, their sanity practices, their beauty norms ? By studying « legitimate bodies », this paper deals with the socio historical processes involved in the making and the naturalization of differences between bodies, especially between masculine and feminine bodies, but also between « white » and racialized bodies. It studies how the invention and the celebration of a « genuine masculinity » and the control and medicalization of women’s bodies have interacted and have nurtured one another up to the contemporary period. It also emphasizes how – in very different contexts of socialization such as children’s education and labor markets - norms and images related to legitimate and dominating bodies are constantly produced and how these norms and images circulate and « do » gender, « race » and class.

This article deals with the importance of iconography, in the institutional and personal communication of management consultants. Based on two groups of iconographic resources (one of a French pioneer firm of the 50’s and one of a contemporary firm), the study analyzes the importance and the narrative functions of images, beginning with the early stages of the development of the sector. In this professional area, images turn out to be helpful resources to build legitimate “institutional façades” as well as to produce specific professional norms regarding body and appearance. Imposing specific social constraints for both male and female consultants, these norms are not gender neutral and participate to the resistance of gender barriers and inequality.